By Sandy Golden

SAN DIEGO—The second night of a six-session class on “birthing,” part of the Shalom Baby program at the Lawrence Family JCC, took place on Tuesday night June 26, in the Youth J Team room. Three couples, each expecting their first child, were present to listen to Vivienne Jakobs, a Clinical Nurse Specialist, who was also there with her husband. Like the others, Jakobs too, is expecting. In fact, she is expecting twins!

Jakobs, who had taught the La Maze method of childbirth for 25 years in her native Mexico, came to San Diego two years ago. After becoming acquainted with Rabbi Menashe East, spiritual leader of Kehillat Ahavat Yisrael in Carmel Valley,  and Judy Nemzer, “Shalom Baby” Coordinator at the JCC, a “birthing” program was developed, similar to La Maze and other methods, but different, because this particular one is intended to have a Jewish slant.

Shira Kline, a.k.a ShirLaLa, in kids' concert Aug. 5

SAN DIEGO – The 8th Annual San Diego Jewish Music Festival, sponsored by the Private Bank of Bank of America and presented by the San Diego Center for Jewish Culture presents “Toon Tunes” by ShirLaLa on Sunday, August 5, at 1:30 p.m. and 3:00 p.m., with a half hour of fun activities involving silly string, snacks, and games to precede each performance.   The “Toon Tunes” concert is presented in collaboration with Nierman Preschool and Camp Jaycee, and is sponsored by Geppetto’s.

Shira Kline, aka “ShirLaLa,” is a Jewish musician, educator, and performer delivering “outrageously hip Jewish music for kids.”   She offers an innovative program and music that are deeply rooted in tradition while attentive to contemporary Jewish thought.  With music, dance, stories, prayer, and art, young audiences are invited to celebrate God, Jewish life, and the beautiful world around them.

“My passion and work is to further enrich, nurture, and inspire our Jewish lives, identity, celebrations and rituals,” said Kline.

ShirLaLa and her talented band, including percussionist Tomer Tzur and guitarist Dan Nadel, lead a high energy and fully participatory 45-minute performance.  With her background as a nursery school teacher and music educator, Klein combines teaching, storytelling, and performing to create a fulfilling and rich musical experience for children and adults alike.

At the age of fourteen, Kline began teaching sacred music and Hebrew in Monroe, Louisiana at Temple B’nai Israel with her father, Rabbi David Kline.  She attended Sarah Lawrence College where she continued to teach music at Koi Ami in White Plains, New York, while developing her approach to Jewish learning through music, dance, prayer, tradition, and Torah.  Kline works with a diverse array of Jewish communities throughout the country, including national organizations, synagogues, museums, Jewish Community Centers, schools, and theatre companies.

People of the Books

Symphony book tunes into discordant and melodic

San Diego Symphony, from Overture to Encore by Melvin G. Goldzband,
San Diego Symphony Orchestra Association, 2007, $24.95

Review by Eileen Wingard

SAN  DIEGO—This is a must read for anyone interested in symphonic music and the struggles of keeping an American symphony orchestra alive. Seven chapters of this book coincide with my own professional musical history, spanning the 37 years when I played in the violin section of the San Diego Symphony Orchestra under conductors Zoltan Rozsnyai, Peter Eros, David Atherton, Yoav Talmi and Jung-Ho Pak. Therefore, I found this book particularly engaging.
    
Mel Goldzband, retired psychiatrist and current archivist of the orchestra, researched his subject thoroughly, transforming the facts into a remarkable narrative. Despite his position as a former board member, he recounts the events from both the musicians’ and management’s points of view with honesty and fairness. He not only used the symphony archives as source material, he also conducted extensive interviews with the SDSO’s past and present conductors, orchestra musicians, administrators, and board members.

It is a fascinating "Upstairs, Downstairs" tome. Most of all, Goldzband tells the saga, the two steps forward, one step backwards history, with dramatic insight.  Even the chapter titles bear the emotional impact of the struggles, e.g. "Chapter XIV. The Talmi Era: From the ‘Golden Age’ to Shattering Silence." I will never forget the last concert under Yoav Talmi when my colleagues were in tears, many of us sobbing openly as we filed off the stage and entered the famine years of bankruptcy: two and a half years without symphony employment.
   
Goldzband revealed some board attitudes that hurt the orchestra, such as the refusal of government grants for fear of socialism. On the other hand, there was board member Abe Ratner who gave the musicians day jobs in his clothing business so they could afford to remain in San Diego.
   
Even in the beginning chapters, when Goldzband was not yet personally involved with the orchestra, he describes personalities, such as the flamboyant Nino Marcelli, high school teacher, composer and the "real father" of the SDSO, with the descriptive details of a discerning writer.
   
I recall hearing about Marcelli from Joe Kirshbaum when the JCC Music Committee of the 54th Street center honored Kirshbaum at its yearly banquet. Kirshbaum had played under Marcelli in the San Diego High School Orchestra and later became principal second violin under Marcelli’s directorship of the SDSO.  After graduating from Yale, Kirshbaum moved to Tyler, Texas, where he conducted the orchestra and taught at the college.  He fathered one of the great cello virtuosos of our time, a frequent soloist with the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, Ralph Kirshbaum. Both Kirshbaums are mentioned in the book.
   
In his introduction, Goldzband writes, "The travails of the San Diego Symphony were brought on in great part by ignorance of the people who were entrusted with its governance… Most of our managers were of little help in straightening us out.  God bless the near-starving musicians who stuck with us, often while understandably hating us. " 

He relates, in the chapter on David Atherton, an incident which deeply disturbed me because of its anti-Semitic overtones, but illustrates the depth to which the hatred descended. In the San Diego Newsline, a musician, writing under the nom de plum Floria Duncan, stated, "The Association responds by canceling three weeks of the winter season –Herb Solomon’s Yom Kippur gift to the orchestra?"
   
I knew Herb Solomon not only as president of the SDSO Association, but as a leader in the Jewish Community, and I felt he was sincere in his efforts to save the symphony.  I recall expressing my objections to the Jewish lawyer whom the Musicians Union had employed and urged that an apology was in order. I don’t remember if any was ever rendered.   (Jump to continuation)
   
 

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Bush-Islamic Center...
(Continued from above)

 

To underscore America's respect for the Muslim faith here at home, I came to this Center six days after the 9/11 attacks to denounce incidents of prejudice against Muslim Americans. (Applause.) Today I am announcing a new initiative that will improve mutual understanding and cooperation between America and people in predominately Muslim countries.

I will appoint a special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference. This is the first time a President has made such an appointment to the OIC. (Applause.) Our special envoy will listen to and learn from representatives from Muslim states and will share with them America's views and values. This is an opportunity for Americans to demonstrate to Muslim communities our interest in respectful dialogue and continued friendship.

We have seen that friendship reflected in the outpouring of support Americans have extended to Muslim communities across the globe during times of war and natural disaster. Americans came to the aid of the victims of devastating earthquakes in Pakistan and Iran, and responded with urgency and compassion to the wreckage of the tsunami in Indonesia and Malaysia. Our country defended Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo after the breakup of Yugoslavia. (Applause.) Today we are rallying the world to confront genocide in Sudan. Americans of all beliefs have undertaken these efforts out of compassion, conviction, and conscience.

The greatest challenge facing people of conscience is to help the forces of moderation win the great struggle against extremism that is now playing out across the broader Middle East. We've seen the expansion of the concept of religious freedom and individual rights in every region of the world -- except one. In the Middle East, we have seen instead the rise of a group of extremists who seek to use religion as a path to power and a means of domination.

These self-appointed vanguard -- this self-appointed vanguard presumes to speak for Muslims. They do not. They call all Muslims who do not believe in their harsh and hateful ideology "infidels" and "betrayers" of the true Muslim faith. This enemy falsely claims that America is at war with Muslims and the Muslim faith, when in fact it is these radicals who are Islam's true enemy. (Applause.)

They have staged spectacular attacks on Muslim holy sites to divide Muslims and make them fight one another. The majority of the victims of their acts of terror are Muslims. In Afghanistan, they have targeted teachers for beatings and murder. In Iraq, they killed a young boy, and then booby-trapped his body so it would explode when his family came to retrieve him. They put children in the backseat of a car so they could pass a security checkpoint, and then blew up the car with the children still inside. These enemies bombed a wedding reception in Amman, Jordan, a housing complex in Saudi Arabia, a hotel in Jakarta. They claim to undertake these acts of butchery and mayhem in the name of Allah. Yet this enemy is not the true face of Islam, this enemy is the face of hatred.

Men and women of conscience have a duty to speak out and condemn this murderous movement before it finds its path to power. We must help millions of Muslims as they rescue a proud and historic religion from murderers and beheaders who seek to soil the name of Islam. And in this effort, moderate Muslim leaders have the most powerful and influential voice. We admire and thank those Muslims who have denounced what the Secretary General of the OIC called "radical fringe elements who pretend that they act in the name of Islam." We must encourage more Muslim leaders to add their voices, to speak out against radical extremists who infiltrate mosques, to denounce organizations that use the veneer of Islamic belief to support and fund acts of violence, and to reach out to young Muslims -- even in our country and elsewhere in the free world -- who believe suicide bombing may some day be justified.

We need to rally the voices of Muslims who can speak most directly to millions in the Arab world left behind in the global movement toward prosperity and freedom. For decades the free world abandoned Muslims in the Middle East to tyrants, and terrorists, and hopelessness. This was done in the interests of stability and peace, but instead the approach brought neither. The Middle East became an incubator for terrorism and despair, and the result was an increase in Muslims' hostility to the West. I have invested the heart of my presidency in helping Muslims fight terrorism, and claim their liberty, and find their own unique paths to prosperity and peace.

The efforts underway in Afghanistan and Iraq are central in this struggle, but that struggle is not going to end the threats; it's not going to end there. We believe the ultimate success of Afghans and Iraqis will inspire others who want to live in freedom, as well. We will work toward a day when a democratic Palestine lives side by side with Israel in peace. (Applause.) We have already seen stirrings of a democratic future in other parts of the Middle East, though it will take time for liberty to flower. A democratic future is not a plan imposed by Western nations, it is a future that the people of the region will seize for themselves. A future of freedom is the dream and the desire of every loving heart.

We know this because of the 8 million people who braved threats and intimidation to vote in Afghanistan. We know this because of the nearly 12 million people who cast ballots in free elections in Iraq. And we know this because the world watched as the citizens of Lebanon raised the banner of the Cedar Revolution, drove out their Syrian occupiers, and chose new leaders under free elections. Even now the hope for freedom is felt in some dark corners in the Middle East -- whispering in living rooms, and coffee houses, and in classrooms. Millions seek a path to the future where they can say what they think, travel where they wish, and worship as they choose. They plead in silence for their liberty -- and they hope someone, somewhere will answer.

So today, in this place of free worship, in the heart of a free nation, we say to those who yearn for freedom from Damascus to Tehran: You are not bound forever by your misery. You plead in silence no longer. The free world hears you. You are not alone. America offers you its hand in friendship. We work for the day when we can welcome you into the family of free nations. We pray that you and your children may one day know freedom in all things, including the freedom to love and to worship the Almighty God.

May God bless you.

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 San Diego Symphony...
 
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Other members of the Jewish Community who are mentioned in the book are Simon Reznikoff, professor of business law at San Diego State University who was the first Jewish president of the board from 1970-71.  Following Attorney Herb Solomon as board president, 1986-88, was Dr. Warren Kessler, 1989-93, a prominent physician and music maven who most recently headed the conductor search committee.  Another attorney, Craig Schloss, headed the board from 2004-5.

The longest continuous member of the board, now an honorary director, is 96 year old Anne Ratner. 
   
Of course it was a Jewish couple who were the ultimate saviors of the symphony.  Without the $120 million gift of Joan and Irwin Jacobs, the largest gift ever given to an orchestra, the SDSO might still be a tenuous institution. But now, in large measure thanks to the security offered by the Jacobs gift, the orchestra, under current conductor Jahja Ling, and with Executive Director Edward B. Gill, seems to be flourishing.

Goldzband dedicated his book: "to Joan and Irwin Jacobs whose incredible and incomparable generosity provides the highest degree of support and encouragement to the performance of great music in our community."      

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